Canzano: Another injury means more questions for the Blazers, and it's time they answer them

View full sizeBruce Ely/The OregonianLaMarcus Aldridge is just the latest Blazers player to suffer a season-ending injury.

Of course ... LaMarcus Aldridge has an abnormality with his hip. Of course ... he'll have surgery. Of course ... out for the season.

Question is: Can we all be out for the season with him?

A round of white flags waved again on Thursday from Trail Blazers fans. Word about Aldridge's labral tear broke around lunch time, and I can imagine a whole bunch of fans heard the Blazers' best player has a bad hip, and chewed right through the news. And so it's time to get real about the long line of Blazers injuries and figure out what it's really about.

We've all joked that the franchise is cursed. The Curse of Sam Bowie. The Curse of Accidental Zillionaire. Or maybe the Curse of Tonya Harding, for what she did to Nancy all those years ago. (Collectively now: "Whyyyyyyyy??!?") Whatever it is, it's high time for a cleansing for the organization, either that, or no free agent in his right mind is going to want any part of the organization that is busy ending seasons and careers.

Burn some sage inside the practice facility. Ask Kerrigan to lift the curse. Bring Bowie back --- heck, retire his number. Hire the Pope as new GM. Whatever it takes, get it done. Because if it's not one of those curses, we're left to wonder if the Blazers haven't done something to bring this on themselves.

I like Jay Jensen. He's an All-Star NBA trainer, and a good person. Players such as Arvydas Sabonis credit him for their longevity and success. But you don't have to look far to find a line of outside trainers, physical therapists and surgeons who will tell you the Blazers don't have a clue how to manage the levers of large, athletic men. Meanwhile, internally, the Blazers will tell you they've pulled their hair out trying to study how to explain the line of season-ending and career-ending injuries that have plagued the organization.

I won't rehash the list of injuries. You're as tired of thinking about them as I am writing about them. But consider that the "Big Three" that former general manager Kevin Pritchard imagined a few years ago --- Brandon Roy, Greg Oden and LaMarcus Aldridge --- have now all had their seasons ended with surgeries. Two of them, probably done with basketball forever. And given the history of bad hips, and Bo Jackson, I'm taking this Aldridge thing seriously.

Bright side: The Blazers have two potential lottery picks in the NBA draft and a wad of free-agent dollars. Down side: Convincing those players that coming to Portland doesn't mean an end to their young, promising careers. Because that's the challenge that the Blazers organization now faces, like it or not. Above being a small-market franchise, above being one of the least diverse NBA cities, above not having a coach yet, above the no general manager issue, sits a growing perception that all of these serious injuries couldn't possibly be coincidental.

I know, I know. Aldridge's injury was dramatically different from Roy's, which was vastly different from Oden's, which was different from Joel Przybilla's and so on. But dismissing all this as a coincidental fluke is like looking at the demise of Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson and announcing that fame was just an innocent bystander.

Either the Blazers are contributing to the injuries or they're not. They don't have to convince me, they have to convince the league. And it became clear Thursday that they're concerned.

Portland went to great lengths to refute a claim made by sports kinesiologist named Larry Wayne "Zig" Ziegler last week in his blog. That claim was also outlined by a popular Blazers fan website. Ziegler claims to have been hired by the Blazers to evaluate Greg Oden, among others.

Ziegler also made an appearance on my afternoon-drive radio show (Podcast). He said of the Blazers, "They paid me. If you call spending about $1,000 per athlete on trying to find out what those athletes need to do better and to try to stay healthy 'not legit' then something's amiss there."

Ziegler claimed in the interview that Blazers trainers were skeptical and defensive with his findings. I asked former Blazers assistant GM Tom Penn, the individual that Ziegler said he directly reported to, if Ziegler's claims were legitimate.

Penn's response: "Nope."

The Blazers statement was strong. It was issued by acting GM Chad Buchanan. And he touted the training staff as the league's "longest tenured." But he needs to go much further.

Finish the story. Slam the door. Remove all reasonable doubt. Because if you don't, you're just playing into the national perception.

The perception ends up the reality for the Blazers. Regardless of how Aldridge got that slight labral tear or if it hinders the rest of his career or heals nicely, for now, he gets lumped with Roy and Oden. The Blazers can only blame themselves for this. They've done nothing to kill the perception that they're part of the problem. They've done nothing to show publicly that they're doing their diligence, and right now, the public perception is as important as the truth.

There's a time for privacy inside a business. But this isn't it. The Blazers should make public their good-faith efforts to study the chronic injuries. Hire the foremost experts to conduct an independent study. Only draft players who don't have a hint in their history of bad joints or curious biomechanics. And push all of this public in a way that dismisses any doubts.

The Blazers will tell you they've done their diligence. They'll tell you they really do their diligence on draft day. But all we can see right now is a line of players who have gone under the knife at an alarming rate in the last three seasons. It's a cluster. And that cluster is worth studying.

I keep preaching that building a champion isn't accidental. Good ownership hires a good management team and a good coach, and the rest follows. Along those same lines, can the injuries really be accidental? Can they really be blamed on a silly curse? I support the decision for Aldridge to sit out the remainder of the season and get his hip fixed.

The rest is up to the Blazers now.

The chronic injuries have to end somewhere. More important yet, the perception that the Blazers are partly responsible for the injuries, or some curse is, must be stopped.

Free agents are watching.

-- John Canzano; follow him on TwitterCatch him on "The Bald-Faced Truth" from 3-6 p.m. weekdays on KXTG (750).